March 09, 2005

what book blogs can do?

Have a look at this discussion on Dan Green’s excellent blog, The Reading Experience. The number of extant articles on litblogging in the US and UK is growing slowly, I’ll file a post soon which references to a few (and maybe stick some permanently in the sidebar).
The article mentioned by Green is by J.Peder Zane: coming from a North Carolina publication, News Observer, puts it pretty much in the lightweight category, but nonetheless it triggered responses from some of my favourite people ( now more accessible since I subscribed to Bloglines). The discussion is worth a look, and demonstrates clearly to me that the charm of this kind of ‘smart cocktail party’, as Zane rather crankily puts it, is the speed with which a throwaway phrase can telescope out into a more thorough digestion of a question via the humble hyperlink.
Thinking out loud? rather than learned conversation? Perhaps, but it beats free to air TV hands down. (You may care to check out Dan's posts on Robert McCrum and Richard Curtis while you're there.)

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